Been thinking a lot about regulation and my forthcoming report for Scottish Government, the Foundations Of The Digital State spends a lot of time looking at a government standards-setting body to achieve co-ordination without communication.
It is interesting to consider technical standards as a form of regulation. In 1994 the <regulation> of the web was a 660 word protocol for http and a handful of pages describing html.
Fast forward to now and the standards to which a simple web page has to comply runs to over 1.7m words.
So when your 17 year old neice builds a website for your golf club she first masters a book of red tape about 4 inches thick?
No she doesn't. The tools she uses embed the standards in them. The problem with regulation is not regulation, it's the cost of compliance.
The standards and regulations governing the phone I am typing on in toto would be a pile of A4 documents taller than me.
Management of complexity is the core skill of the modern age.
Been thinking a lot about regulation and my forthcoming report for Scottish Government, the Foundations Of The Digital State spends a lot of time looking at a government standards-setting body to achieve co-ordination without communication.
It is interesting to consider technical standards as a form of regulation. In 1994 the <regulation> of the web was a 660 word protocol for http and a handful of pages describing html.
Fast forward to now and the standards to which a simple web page has to comply runs to over 1.7m words.
So when your 17 year old neice builds a website for your golf club she first masters a book of red tape about 4 inches thick?
No she doesn't. The tools she uses embed the standards in them. The problem with regulation is not regulation, it's the cost of compliance.
The standards and regulations governing the phone I am typing on in toto would be a pile of A4 documents taller than me.
Management of complexity is the core skill of the modern age.
Thanks Gordon - Very good point.
I'll look out for your report.
Great piece - this may also be interesting to readers who are interested in the chequered history of deregulatory interventions:
https://unchecked.substack.com/p/grenfell-was-the-product-of-a-broken